NEW YORK (CBS.MW) -- Treasury prices posted mild losses Friday on what was described as dismal trading volume after staging their most ferocious rally in months on Thursday. In the past two sessions, the bellwether 30-year has rallied over two points and its yield has fallen by 16 basis points. Dealers said the market was pausing to catch its breath Friday. The benchmark 30-year bond fell 6/32 to yield
TYX, -0.03%
5.975 percent. The 10-year lost 12/32 to yield
TNX, -0.11%
5.843 percent while the 5-year subtracted 9/32 to yield 5.737 percent. The 2-year lost 5/32 to yield 5.574 percent. The discount rate on the 52-week bill was up 4 basis points at 4.74 percent. In the futures pit, the September T-bond rose 12/32 to 115-24.

NEW YORK (CBS.MW) -- Multex.com is expected to buy online financial content provider Market Guide Inc. in a stock-for-stock deal worth more than $110 million, according to people close to the two companies. The purchase would give Multexmltx
access to Lake Success, N.Y.-based Market Guide's
530543, -4.02%
financial content, including company profiles and financial data. Multex distributes Wall Street research reports to online investors and brokerages. Market Guide aggregates data about publicly traded companies and sells it to America Online
aol
Charles Schwab & Co.
SC.H, -44.00%
MarketWatch.com
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and other Web sites.

COLOGNE, Germany (CBS.MW) -- The cost of rebuilding Kosovo and plans to reform the international financial system while providing debt relief to the poorest nations will dominate discussions as the leaders from the Group of Seven plus Russia meet this weekend. In their first meeting since the end of the war, the leaders are not expected to come to any concrete solutions about Kosovo, although they have already decided on a $100 billion debt relief plan and some advances on financial reform. "This is a bold and historic step," Gene Sperling, the president's chief economics adviser, told reporters in announcing the debt relief agreement.

MELVILLE, N.Y., (CBS.MW) -- MSC Industrial Direct Co. warned of a third-quarter earnings shortfall for the second time in as many months, sending shares screaming 32 percent lower and analysts shouting out downgrades. Shares fell 5 1/4 to close at 11 1/8. The direct marketer
MSM, -1.92%
said it expects earnings of about 18 cents a share, 7 cents off the current consensus estimate of analysts surveyed by First Call. MSC cited a slowdown in demand and in sales growth. Last year the company posted a third-quarter profit of 21 cents a share.

SANTA CLARA, Calif. (CBS.MW) -- Shares of Intel dropped5 percent Friday amid concerns of a delay in the rollout of a new version of its Pentium III processor. As a result, Morgan Stanley Dean Witter analyst Mark Edelstone cut his rating to "outperform" from "strong buy," citing the company's postponement of the introduction of its 0.18-micron Pentium III chip. Shares of the semiconductor titan
INTC, -0.66%
headquartered in Santa Clara, Calif., stumbled 3 1/16, or 5.3 percent, to 54 15/16, on trading of 40 million shares.

NEW YORK (CBS.MW) -- Internet IPOs Viant and GoTo.com vaulted Friday as investors piled on after upward pricing moves. Viant
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shot past its revised $16 price with an open of 27 3/4 and closed at 24 3/8. GoTo.com
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jumped to $27 per share at open, nearly doubling its $15 price, and closed at 22 3/8. "You have people that are sitting on the sidelines waiting for somebody else to tell them what the good stocks are," said David Menlow of IPO Financial Network. "If something prices on the upside, it's a magnet for Internet investors. They think it's a ticket to their next fortune."

NEW YORK (CBS.MW) -- The boards of US West and Frontier Corp. said Friday they are planning to stick with Global Crossing's merger offer, shunning -- at least for now -- a rival bid by Qwest Communications International. Qwest, meanwhile, reiterated that it has "no plan to change our bid." If that's the case, it would appear Global Crossing's merger offer will win out unless Qwest has a change of heart. Qwest made a hostile $55 billion bid to buy both US West and Frontier last weekend, which initially exceeded Global Crossing's friendly agreement to merge with those companies.

SAN FRANCISCO (CBS.MW) -- Adobe shares jumped almost 12 percent after the company blew past fiscal second-quarter earnings expectations, which had already been raised earlier this month. The company
ADBE, -1.49%
said its Internet and design products -- such as Acrobat, Illustrator and Photoshop -- led the growth. Adobe earned $45 million (70 cents a diluted share), up from $28 million (41 cents a share) in the same quarter last year. In an early June release, the company said it'll earn more than the 62 to 66 cents a share it laid out three months ago. Originally, Wall Street saw Adobe earning 55 cents a share. Second-quarter sales jumped 8 percent, but Chief Executive John Warnock said he expects to increase sales 15 percent in the current fiscal year.

FRANKFURT (CBS.MW) -- The European Central Bank, in an apparent bid to strengthen the flagging euro, confirmed it had intervened in the currency markets on Friday at the request of the Bank of Japan. "On behalf of the Bank of Japan we decided to intervene to buy euros and sell yen," Philip Rispel, a European Central Bank press spokesman in Frankfurt, told CBS.MarketWatch.com.Rispel wouldn't disclose the total amount of money the ECB spent in its foreign exchange intervention. "We won't give any practical details on the operation," he said.

With all the mating dances taking place these days in the telecom ballroom, one has to wonder what's wrong with that wallflower in the corner. So it's little surprise that the balconies are full of speculators just dying to know when, or if, BellSouth
BLS, -8.33%
will make an advance. Sure, it hinted a while back that it might buy Qwest
qwst
but then Qwest made its move to trip up Global Crossing's
GBLX, -2.59%
bid for both Frontier
FRO, -1.13%
and US West
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That complex waltz is still ongoing. See story. And its participants all seem to agree with Qwest's Joe Nacchio, who says that "scale and scope are increasingly important." Boardroom gyrations, not surprisingly, have inspired wild swings in shares prices. Yet BellSouth's stock, notes SmartMoney.com, hasn't moved more than 10 percent since December. As befits a wallflower. "So what will BellSouth do?" asks SmartMoney, which answers that those "in a position to know aren't saying" and goes on to recommend BellSouth's stock to those who have "the stomach for it."

LOS ANGELES (CBS.MW) -- Thank God! Am I ever glad the insane Internet IPO market is cooling. Alan Greenspan's right: The party is over. At least for those overpriced hot cyber stocks with no earnings and no prospects of earnings. The party's over, and the real work is beginning.Now we can move into the next phase in developing the technology-driven "new economy." Now blue-chip land-based companies are taking over, using the Internet as just one more distribution channel, in many ways similar to the catalogs and retail stores we already know.

NEW YORK (CBS.MW) -- How do you spell "relief"? For the bond markets, it was Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan?s dulcet tones in which he implied that one hike in the Federal funds rate might be all that?s needed to stay ahead of the curve, when it comes to keeping a lid on inflation ... Bond traders sprang into action. They bought everything in sight, pushing prices up and yields down ... In my view, this looks like a classic case of premature excitation. Not that I don?t think bond rates are too high: I did, and still do. It?s just too much too soon?and it could spell bad news for the equity side of the room.

WASHINGTON (CBS.MW) -- If you're looking for a high-flying Nasdaq stock that didn't fly in the rally, stock watchers in the U.S. capital say a 23-year-old just turned some heads. Gene Hoffman Jr., president and CEO of EMusic.com Inc.
emus
earlier this week addressed the Joint Economic Committee on Capitol Hill. Hoffman, whose company offers tunes in the new MP3 music format for the Web, talked high-tech right alongside Alan Greenspan, CEO Lou Gerstner of IBM
IBM, -1.82%
and CEO Eric Schmidt at Novell
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Hoffman was poised and forthright. You can see it on the Web right here. Just the fact that Hoffman didn't fidget with his hands is a big plus at these congressional hearings.

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